Artikel

Klanten en esthetocraten: een pleidooi voor het onderzoek van de betekenis van muziek

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Abstract

Sounds and aesthetocrats. A plea for the investigation of the significance of music - Music is a cultural expression that can be used to increase aesthetic pleasure. Nevertheless music is seized by aesthetocrats to gain symbolic power within the field of taste. In this process of gaining power they refer to the principle of the Absolute Autonomy of their cultural products and its incorporating aesthetics, that is, they refer to an ideological construction that can easily be challenged by the application of semiotic achievements. Curiously enough this challenging does not seem to progress in the field of music. The semiotics of music seems to lag behind as one of the last remaining aesthetocratic bastions, given the troublesome semiotic statutes of music. In this article the author analyses the aesthetocratic discourse hidden in the formalistic study of the significance of music by revealing the sociologically deter¬ mined fields in which that discourse is brought to life. It is also argued that it is possible to construct a model in which music can be semiotocally investigated without resorting to such a formalistic approach.

How to Cite:

Caudron, B., (1991) “Klanten en esthetocraten: een pleidooi voor het onderzoek van de betekenis van muziek”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 36(3), 259–277. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95080